I would like to take this opportunity to bring you up to date on a few important developments in and around ISSIP.
The first ISSIP co-sponsored conference will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, from November 6th -8th in partnership with the Arizona State University, W. P. Carey School of Business Center for Services Leadership as part of the 24th Annual Compete Through Service Symposium.
We are very grateful for the support of Dr. Mary Jo Bitner, CSL Executive Director. A special thanks to both Alicia Holder, CSL Director of Business Partnerships, and Professor Haluk Demirkan, University of Washington, ISSIP Ambassador to CSL, ISSIP BOD Member, who, over the last several months, put tremendous effort into this event. Please check out the ISSIP website for registration and promo code.
On a different front, over the last several months, ISSIP has been working closely with National Science Foundation as NSF, in collaboration with Dr. Jim Spohrer, and Dr. Paul Maglio, and many other thought leaders, and institutions, launched a new program on “Smart Service Systems”. The Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC), must be led by an interdisciplinary academic research team with a least one industry partner, to collaborate in building technological and human innovation capacity. This is a huge development for the service community in general, and ISSIP members in particular, who can leverage the interdisciplinary nature of collaboration already taking place amongst ISSIP academic, institutional, and student members. Please check out the solicitation site, discussions on the NSF linked group, and on Dr. Spohrer’s blog for more information.
Another significant recent development is the formation the California Center for Service Science that was launched earlier this month. The mission for the Center is to “encourage and foster innovative research and education on all topics related to service.” We are very happy to be working closely with CCSS through Professor Maglio, UC Merced, ISSIP Ambassador to CCSS andDr. Christoph Breidbach, UC Merced, ISSIP Editor-in-Chief, Research Scientist CCSS, and will definine specific areas of collaboration in the coming months.
On the internal front, membership grew by more than 30% over the last quarter bringing total number of ISSIP individual members to more than 360, and our pipeline of institutional members is growing. A new Special Interest Group, Software Defined Networking, chaired by Zach Seils, Lead Engineer, Cisco, was formed in August with a mission to “leverage the Software Defined Networking momentum to accelerate the transition of SDN for service professionals and spark innovative approaches to service delivery.” Six new members have joined the ISSIP Ambassador rank bringing the total number of ISSIP Ambassadors to fifteen, connecting ISSIP to more than fifteen professional societies. We kicked of the ISSIP Student Mentorship Program in May with sixteen students from Hult International Business School participating in two pilot programs in collaboration with our member companies and completed the pilot in August. Another round of mentorships started this month: Sbona Honor Students from San Jose State University are working with execs from IBM, Cisco, and HP to develop ISSIP’s mentorship platform around problems and opportunities in urban areas across the globe.
As always, please feel free to reach out to me (execdir@issip.org) to inquire about the SIGs, Ambassadors Program, Mentorship Program, ISSIP Committees, Chapters, or to share ideas, feedback, and suggestions.
Yassi Moghaddam
Executive Director